The first thing she noticed as she came to was a large amount of pain, as she looked down at her body she noticed the reason why: there was a lot of blood, gouged out pieces of flesh and broken skin. She gagged at the sight, nearly vomiting out whatever meal she had last. Speaking of meals, I could really go for one… She thought to herself, noticing how hungry she was feeling.

When she tried looking around for something to eat she found a horrifying sight: the ground littered with corpses. Each horrifyingly pale and wounds reminiscent of hers, a shrill scream left her lungs, far louder than she had intended.

Trying to push past the fear and hunger she tried figuring out where in the hells she ended up, she didn’t remember entering any corpse littered caverns lately! At least it wasn't totally dark, as bioluminescent mushrooms covered the ground.

While digging through her memories to find out why she was here in the first place she found something rather disturbing, or rather, a disturbing lack of something. Great, stranded in a cave filled with corpses while my body is a mess riddled with wounds. Things are just grand right now. She thought as a deep sigh escaped her lips. Her sighing was rudely interrupted by a voice in her head.

[unlocked skill system]

[fear resistance (low) unlocked]

She felt information being burned into her mind about something called a guidance construct. Apparently used for distrubuting your mana in predefined ways to improve yourself. She quickly drew the sigil required to summon the construct from her blood and sat down in the middle. After pushing her mana into it the construct appeared in her mind.

[name: - ]

[mana: 19/20 (0 allocated) ]

[stats]

Strength 7 Dexterity 4 Agility 6 Vitality 6 Toughness 5 Intelligence 3 Wisdom 4

[available skills]

fear resistance (low) (4 mana)

The first thing she noticed was the lack of a name, she decided to do something about that once she got settled safely. Her stats seemed pretty focused towards the physical side of things. After fiddling around with the construct for a bit she found out how to get more information.

[stats can be improved by permanently allocating mana to it. Current exchange rate is 1:1]

Strength: affects your strength Dexterity: affects motor skills Agility: affects reflexes Vitality: affects healing speed Toughness: affects the toughness of your body Intelligence: affects mental processing speed Wisdom: affects memory and mental clarity

Okay, so I can spend mana to improve my body, that sounds pretty useful. She wasn’t sure what to invest in so she put it aside for now. She tried focusing on the available skills but couldn’t get anything out of it, so she moved on to fear resistance.

[fear resistance (low): reduce the effect fear has on your mind by 5% per rank]

[Allocate 4 mana capacity?]

Yeah, that sounds amazing right about now. She thought as she quickly allocated the mana to it.

[name: - ]

[mana: 16/16 (4 allocated)]

[stats] (0 allocated)

Strength 7 Dexterity 4 Agility 6 Vitality 6 Toughness 5 Intelligence 3 Wisdom 4

[skills] (4 allocated)

fear resistance 1 (low) (5% effect)

When she felt her mind clearing up slightly she grabbed a small rock and sat down next to a patch of dirt. In it she wrote a list of what she needed to do immediately.

I’m wounded, I need to treat that as soon as I can, improvised bandages maybe? Work on a way to defend myself, if I want to move around I need to be able to protect myself, find a weapon on the corpses? Food and water, I have neither and I’m already hungry, the thirst will probably follow soon. Possibly hunt? Find or make shelter, preferably near a source of water. Figuring out a name, not having one is just weird. Escape and find out why I’m here in the first place

Having sorted her goals she decided to tackle the first two goals at once. She walked over to the corpses, ignoring the stench, and looked around for a weapon in vain, all they had on them was a set of clothes. She ripped off parts from one of the body’s shirts and wrapped it around her wounds. Unsurprisingly it stung like crazy, but it got the job done.

That left her with the second problem, weaponry. Since she couldn’t find any she had to settle with making one. Luckily that didn’t seem too hard, sharpen a rock and tie it to a stick. The rock part shouldn’t be too hard, but she couldn’t see any sticks in this part of the cave, and she wasn’t about to wander around without a weapon. The rope could be substituted with some cloth, so all she needed was a stick like object.

The cave didn’t have much in terms of materials, there’s rock, dirt, clothes, corpses and skeletons. While she was looking around for materials a disturbing thought popped up in her head, she could technically use bones. Well I don’t like the idea but I’d rather that than dying.

She ripped off the forearm of a skeleton, deciding to use that for a grip. While she was at it she also collected enough cloth for her little crafting project. After that she went to the cavern wall again, grabbed a rock, and started sharpening it against the rock wall to create a decent edge. She put her newly sharpened rock inside of the bone she pilfered and tied it down best she could.

The result was an underwhelming axe with a wobbly head, but it would do. Seeing that it would probably fall apart pretty easily she made another three just in case. After spanning a band of cloth around her waist as a belt she hung her axes on it. Satisfied with her progress she sat down to take a break, apparently having gotten used to the corpses around her.

After taking a (roughly) 5 minute break she sat down in the sigil she had drawn earlier and activated the construct. After a few moments of consideration she assigned 8 of her mana.

[Assign mana to the following stats?]

Strength 3 Agility 2 Vitality 1 Toughness 2

[Confirm mana allocation?]

She decided some extra strength was necessary if she needed to fight, agility sounded useful to her and so did toughness. She put 1 mana in vitality, since she had quite a few wounds to heal. She confirmed her selection.

[name: - ]

[mana: 8/8 (12 allocated)]

[stats] (8 allocated)

Strength 10 Dexterity 4 Agility 8 Vitality 7 Toughness 7 Intelligence 3 Wisdom 4

[skills] (4 allocated)

fear resistance 1 (low) (5% effect)

Having dealt with that she decided that it was time to leave this part of the cave in the hope of finding some water and food. She confirmed the hatchets on her hip and made her way to the exit of the dimly lit cave.